Contemplating Wisdom

Got coffee? Then let's get started. A third stream of similarity for religious ideas is related to the popular inquiry in several new books reflecting in-depth studies of the brain that ask the question: "Is there a physical location in our bodies that serves as a connecting point to God?" The newest medical techniques, that weren't available even ten years ago, allow us to study specific brain activity and provide research opportunity in mapping the brain during spiritual activity. This research brings us to the brink of possibly determining if there is a part of the our anatomy that is responsible for our God awareness. For those who are purely scientist, the location of this brain activity gives credence to the discussion that religion, and therefore God, is no more than a natural function of our bodies, thus, there is nothing beyond our humanness. For those persons at the other end of the debate the location of brain activity during spiritual experiences gives ri...

I’ve been thinking about this second similarity of religions for a few days and it just so happens that I’m away this week in Santa Fe, NM. The local coffee is superb and I’ve already had more than I need. So, grab whatever it is you have and let’s talk more about religious similarities. Given that the God we speak of transcends existence and being, then such ideas transcend language as well. That means our language is limited to the point we cannot speak directly about God. The best we can do is use words that are bound to our existence, our being (not God’s), and our ability to comprehend. Therefore, we must accept that all speech about God is going to be severely limited. No matter what or how we say it our words will always fall short of the totality of what can be meant when we say God. That leaves us with the alternative: to use metaphor and symbol to convey our limited knowledge of God. And because metaphors and symbols are open to wide interpretation so that no single one ...

While this title may sound theological, it is really about coffee. One day I’ll open a coffee shop for those who desire to simply hang-out and share their experiences of life and the truths they have learned. Okay, got coffee now where was I? Oh, yes, the three similarities in world religions. Perhaps I should clarify for I don't want to give the impression that it is the religious ideas that are similar but rather the general principles under which we operate in our search for that which we call God—by whatever name or title. Ancient worshipers understood there to be an energy or force at the very core of creation that was responsible for holding everything together and empowering nature’s ability to regenerate itself. The seasons of the year, the birthing of off-spring, and the precise repetition in the movement of the stars, moon, and sun were a witness of that invisible force which kept creation in constant renewal. As language became more sophisticated the record...

This may take a while so grab your cup. I've been reading for the past two years on the subject of religious development. Archaeological discoveries in the last year allows us to now date religious development as far back as 17,000 years. Though the actual site under examination was uncovered 55 years ago it has taken that many years to begin, literally, mining the artifacts. It is, as you can imagine, terribly tedious work to avoid destroying an ancient treasure that could never be replaced if damaged. Now I know some will find this information heartening while others will find it disturbing. The reason being that many who find their faith in the Judea-Christian tradition take literally the premodern, Biblical assumption that creation began around 6000 BCE. The discovery of early religious development is good but too early can cause issues with some people's faith. In the study of religious life in human existence it is clear that the roots of our tradition don't g...

In the movie Avatar there is a scene near the beginning where the female lead rescues the hero by saving him from the wild, dog-like creatures that are about to overpower him. She wounds one animal then, after scattering the others, returns to the body of the dying animal to say a few ritualistic words before ceremonially ending his misery. Anthropologist, paleontologist, and archaeologists who study the paintings and carvings of premodern man suggest that the earliest of rituals were evoked by a supreme respect for all life. The traces of these rituals date back more than 17,000 years when hunting was survival. The rituals were not created for the purpose of worship but rather the expression of what the hunters came to understand as this sacred connection: life was taken that life might continue. There was a bond between the hunted and the hunter. Rites of passage were the means of determining the preparedness of young men to hunt but also how well they understood this connectednes...

Got your coffee? Previously I referenced the story of Galileo whose theory on the sun being the center of our solar system contradicted the Biblical interpretation of Earth being the center. The Church forced Galileo to recant, cease his writing, and though he was not executed for his heresy he would spend the rest of his life as a prisoner. This same struggle is coming home to the Christian faith and the church in a world that has moved beyond modern to post-modern while the faith of many remains in a distant world of the past. The fastest growing segment in our population are those who indicated they are "non-religious". Being non-religious does not mean they are without a God consciousness or have no desire to develop an awareness of the part of their existence that is spiritual. Rather they are saying that the state of current religious practices and explanations of life don't work for them. The challenge of modern religious life is to do what societies have always do...

Allegory is defined as "a representation of an abstract or spiritual meaning through concrete or material forms; figurative treatment of one subject under the guise of another." The purpose of allegory is to provide a parallel example that is understandable to a subject that is not as easily understood. Synonyms for allegory are parable, moral, symbolism, and story. Some of the more famous allegories are John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Plato's Allegory of the Cave , and the writings of C.S. Lewis, especially The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe . Gulliver's Travels is a classic allegory about British political life during a particular time in history. The Christian book Revelation is an allegory written in a form called "apocalyptic" meaning end of time. Revelation has stirred a number of Christian pop culture books called the Left Behind series. An unusual book that recently made the best seller's list is The Shack; a story that chall...

The past is massive. So much so that we tend to shrink it to manageable sized sound bites. For example we often think of human development as happening in a straight line. That is, different cultures divided by thousands of miles and separated by light years of diverging thoughts all arriving at the ultimate conclusions at about the same time. Closer analysis reveals that in the big picture there are similarities related to human development but that doesn't mean they were anywhere near being alike. In our western world (think of that as Asia Minor, Europe, and much later the Americas) religious and scientific development has its key roots in Greek/Roman and Jewish cultures. Theses cultures come clashing together when the church, harmless as a dove but wise as a serpent (Jesus' words not mine) slithered into the Roman Empire. About the time the earliest Greeks were beginning to “philosophize” on the origins of the universe the Israelite were exiles in far away Babylon. Th...

Pour another cup and let's see what there is to think about this morning. The beginning of 'reason' can be traced to some of these early philosophers mentioned below. Centuries later we see reason being refined by enlightenment, science, physics, and quantum physics so that the path of faith and reason have diverged. But is that how it all started. For the earliest thinkers, reason was a path to faith. Whether you approach it from the study of Greek philosophers who sought to find the divine connection through reason or the Jewish thinking of men like Philo, who paralleled the understanding of “logos” with the Rabbinic Wisdom literature, the concepts of faith and reason are inseparable. Post-modern thinking tends to make us choose reason over against faith. To those at the extreme end of being rational minded, faith has little or no importance, it is useless. Only reason is essential to understand what is necessary in life. And for those at the other end, faith requires...

Historian, thinker, teacher, and theologian Albert Outler wrote that a definition of God is "that in which we put our ultimate trust for life." In the course of living as humans in this great universe at different points we come both to acknowledge and/or deny that there is something beyond our ability to grasp. Denial is a so-very-human reaction as it is our refusal to accept that we are not the captains of our own destiny. Denial is a relatively modern concept when considering that ancients who were considered " atheist " were given that designation not because they believed in "no god" but rather because they rejected the god that was traditionally designated by the thinking of their society. The early philosophers mentioned above are vitally important to the development of our now post-modern thinking for these basic premises: 1) knowledge of god can be achieved 2) but only in part, and 3) what we know or experience or see of god is achieved through ...

Terrific disasters and successes are often described as "the perfect storm" meaning that a number of events must come together at the same time in order to produce such history altering occasions. In weather events perfect, and not so perfect, storms have been referred to as "an act of God". When we can't explain the horrible tragedy or even the uncanny good that happens to someone, religious folk often say something about "God's will" or a new spiritualist expression, "it's a God thing". When life takes an unpredictable turn or clearly changes abruptly from what is normally expected our first reaction is to blame or congratulate God for the event. This goes back to some very primitive feelings that life is not predictable and certainly not in our realm to control. Therefore, it must be that which is greater and beyond us that is in control. And though we don't always understand the why, it is totally in the interest of self-ass...

Coffee is good for getting you up to speed so grab a cup. Our modern world and its technology has a way of deceiving us with the belief that knowledge has always moved throughout the world at current speeds. Not so today and much less so in ancient times. Interesting that some of the most progressives thinkers were limited to certain locals and in fact their writings languished for want of a broader means of communication. The printing press would change that but even then that great invention does not compare to the instant access we have to thought, reason, and logic. In the same time frame of Jesus was living in Palestine there was a tremendously important thinker writing in the Greek community of the city of Alexandria, built by and named for the Greek Emperor Alexander the Great. Philo was a Jewish philosopher and theologian living in the Hellenistic world. Because the Jewish community was large, diverse and scattered, Philo was a bridge for philosophical thought knowing the ...

Ahhh! Is there thinking before coffee? If you haven't had your second cup you likely finished my title with, "..therefore I am." That rational thought would not come for some centuries. As civilization moved forward the discipline of thinking was a new discovery. Western society, philosophy, theology, science, and religion and most of what we are was finding its foundation in the exercise of rational thought. Though there are other great thinkers for sure, the Greeks are where we Westerners usually begin. Socrates challenged those who heard him to enter into "dialogue" with one's self and others for the purpose of being rational. Socrates established that the universe was rational, could be explored by reason and that one could reach a spiritual peace through such intellectional pursuit. Plato took up where Socrates began by surmizing reason to be that which comes to us from outside ourselves. Thought is that which captures us or draws us towards itself. ...

Hard to put a finger on the exact date but somewhere around the time personal computers were baffling everyone there appeared the most astoundingly simple books, "Computing for Dummies" and "The Complete Idiots Guide to Computing". Clearly I was born too early for these books spawned a concept that would have made my sophomore year so much easier. Today there are a plethora of "Dummies" for every subject including the one I needed most: philosophy. Perhaps a bit more serious are two books recently discovered that have helped me wade through the swamp to a stable ground for understanding the history of thinking: Karen Armstrong, "A Case for God" (she is on the best sellers list more than once) and Robert Wright, "The Evolution of God" (more accurately the evolution of philosophy and religion but titles sell books you know). There are few original thinkers currently among us six billion on this third rock from the sun and I'm no...

Grab a cup and let's talk. There is an old saying, "When the sun comes up every gazelle knows that to survive the day he must be one step faster than the fastest lion. When the sun comes up every lion knows he must be one step faster than the slowest gazelle if he is to survive. So whether you are a lion or a gazelle, when the sun comes up you better be running." In the ancient world survival was the primary concern but on the road to the Forum a funny thing happened. Civilization matured as agriculture changed the way people lived, as societies evolved, as cities were formed, and eventually people didn't have to run. Thinking became a parlor sport. Well, actually more than just thinking, contemplation: How did I get here and what am I suppose to be doing? The chief architects for contemplation in Western thought were three Amigos: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Socrates was so focused on contemplation and dialogue about thinking that he refused to write down his tho...

“The unexamined life is not worth living,” said Socrates 400 years before the current era. Socrates is understood by many to be the father of modern day philosophy even though he would likely not recognized what philosophy has become. The beginning of that quote reads, “ It is the greatest good for a man (sic) to discuss virtue every day....” Socrates' goal was virtue, or, finding the best life possible. But unlike our modern philosophy his dialogue was not about promoting intellectual ascent to ideas nor was the dialogue he engaged in intent on bludgeoning an opponent into intellectual submission. For Socrates dialogue was a spiritual experience of self emptying. The highest knowledge is to reach a point of silence arrived at when a person has exhausted all they know and realizes that they really don't know. Unlike the modern day talking heads we see on television and Internet who seem maliciously intent on beating us up with what they know for certain, Socratic conversion, or...

With technical help from friend and web site designer Nathan Delle I recently redesigned our church's web presence www.fumcgarland.org. And, thanks to Google Analytic, I realize just how important are web communications in this age of the Internet. We are urged by those who know to have a presence on things that didn't exist a few years ago: The Web, Facebook, Twitter, and Blogs. Why? Because it is the culture of communications for the current and next generation. A quick scan of history finds numerous examples of how popular religious figures used the changing landscape of communications to reach the masses with words of hope and courage. John Wesley was mortified when invited to take the preached word out of the Holy Church and onto the hillside outside the mines of England. The success was phenomenal and evolved into putting preachers on horseback to literally "pony express" a message of hope to where the people lived. At the turn of the 20th century Aimee Semple ...

Time to pick up where I left off. In case you were wondering, I felt like I said all I needed to say. So why start again? Well, I've continued to read and reflect on many issues, some too narrow or technical to be inspirational. In the last month or so I've read and re-read Karen Armstrong's book, A Case For God . It has challenged and changed my thinking in an important way. A Case For God starts at the beginning of religious exploration and really grounds itself in the thinking of the earliest of the great philosophers, Socrates. Plato and Aristotle would come later but Socrates set the stage for thinking that has carried us for centuries and should still be our model for the now post-modern era. Socrates' premise in regards to the eternal questions, "how did we come to exist and what are we doing here?" is simply "we don't know and there is no way to find out." So why are we talking about it? Well, in admitting that we don't know gives us...